


La Mue

by cyanocorax



Series: La Chevalerie [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen, Genderswap
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-27
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2017-12-13 02:52:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/819118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyanocorax/pseuds/cyanocorax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>n. a cage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

The young hawks, when taken from the nest and carried away from the parent-birds, undergo the confinement of the _mue_ with great difficulty. […] The _mue_ is of two kinds, “on the stone,” or at “liberty,” “ _sur la pierre, soit en liberté_.”

 

-

 

It seemed to come forward out of an unnatural mist, as if it were floating towards her instead of the other way around. Cold and black and wet, lined with seaweed and surrounded by air reeking of salt, and fish, and damp.

 _I will die here_ , she remembered thinking. _Like as not they will bury me beneath this godsforsaken pile of rock._ It was a good thing the Targaryens gave their corpses to the fire. She did not think she could bear the idea of her bones sharing space with those of a hundred stunted dragon princelings, all bent and shriveled in their tombs. At Storm’s End there was a high hill behind the keep where the rain beat down upon the dead of House Baratheon, and ever since she was thirteen and the bloated bodies of her mother and her father were consigned to that earth she had thought she would one day join them.

Now that was Renly’s place. And Robert would like as not wish to return— though perhaps it would be wiser if they buried him beneath the Red Keep, as a sign, to the kingdom, of continuity, of permanency.

Her husband’s boots made four loud thuds against the deck as he walked to stand beside her, gloved hands gripping the rail, small eyes fixed upon the castle which rose towards the sky as if poised for flight. “Impressive,” he said, half to her, half to himself, a transparent attempt at reassurance. Truth be told it was an empty prize, and one they would not hold for long. Cersei Lannister would bear a son, and in a turn of the seasons these would be his walls to loathe.

A crowd of sullen, shivering smallfolk were there to meet them upon the dock with gifts of muffled speech and clumsy genuflection. _They would have cheered for Robert_. She strode down the gangplank with her jaw clenched and her hands tangled in a snarl of flesh and fabric, pretended she did not hear the whispers, did not see the little looks that passed between one common face and another. _The king’s sister._ As well say the king’s horse, the king’s boot, the king’s dog.

That night, lying in the dark with her husband snoring beside her and the sound of the sea not far beyond, she breathed the castle’s air deep into her lungs and tried to grow accustomed to its smell and to its weight. 

When she rose at dawn she found Axell lying on his belly, blanket clutched in one hand, his eyes shifting behind their lids. She dressed quickly, methodically, pausing before the grimy mirror to pull her hair back into place, and stepped out into the corridor to inspect the keep of which she had now become mistress.

As she passed the arrow slits lining the outer wall she could hear stirrings in the yard below. Men calling to one another, leading dogs and horses to and fro, women chattering. As she climbed the Stone Drum’s stair their sounds grew fainter, until they merged with the hiss of the ocean and her own shuffling steps. Rising, she passed a series of doors, which when she attempted to open them all showed themselves to be locked. This angered her. She did not like a place to have secrets. She had known Storm’s End better than her own face, every hidden passage, every unused chamber—

_Silly fool._

They were a girl’s idle wishes. She was a woman grown, wed and widowed and wed once more. Fought a war, and won. _Remember why it is you are here._.

She had reached the uppermost floor. A heavy door stood under an arch formed by two dragons curved in flight, with thin strands of salt air blowing in from the gap between it and the stone floor. She brushed the dust from her skirts and shook the ache from her thighs before pressing her hand to the wood and giving it a forceful shove. Suddenly, the smell of the ocean was all around her; a biting wind plucked at her dress, her hair. She felt her lungs grow light with it as she entered, the dust shifting beneath her feet giving her movements the illusion of floating. Her mind seemed to clear. 

The Painted Table was not so grand as she had been led to believe. Old wood, worn and wine-stained. She ran her hands across it, from Dorne to King’s Landing, then stood before the raised stone chair and appraised it in silence. How many Targaryens had graced its seat, squirmed upon it in discomfort, worn it smooth with their impatience? 

_Aegon sat here. Aerys. Rhaegar._

When she was a child, no older than four, her mother had convinced both her and Robert that ghosts lived inside Storm’s Ends walls and would sometimes step out to wander the corridors. Among them, a great-great-grandmother who had hanged herself from one of the rookery rafters, and her son, murdered bloody in his bed, walking thereafter with his guts in his hands and an axe between his eyes. Cassana was merciless on the dark stormy nights when her children ran to her chamber seeking comfort. When they asked where the eerie rattling of iron they could hear traveling up the stones came from she told them it was the spirits of dead prisoners, shaking their chains. 

Now she was, of course, too old for such things, but if Storm’s End had taught her anything it was that strange places bred strange tales. And so she found herself wondering what stories had passed between princes and would-be princes in the bedchambers of this dead and ugly place.

As she made her way back down she lingered before each locked door and peered through their slits and keyholes. What small, shriveled, ugly things would she find on the other side, hidden beneath rotting bedframes and faded tapestries? Every scutter she heard, every shadow she passed, was not known to her, held no discernable reflection of life. _These are no ghosts of mine._

At the bottom of the stair she paused in the windowless hall, hands folded, feet still. There were many tasks to be done, a household to be ordered. She wanted to beat the smell of ash out of the corners, she wanted to scrub the red paint from the furniture. This was a different sort of war, she knew, but one she felt far less equipped to fight. Now her husband was even more useless than the first one, and no smugglers were coming to help her reorder the kitchens, hire new servants.

Secretly, inwardly, in a place hidden behind as many locked doors as there were in this monster of a castle, she thought of her brother’s rebellion as one of the few times in her short life when her eyes had been flung fully open. She did not miss the death, but in some ways, she missed the dying. 

Now the veil had returned and again her life had no place for honesty. 

Women were born to lie, to be lied to. 

_Accept it. Accept it as the only way._

In the blind darkness she placed one hand against the wall to her right and began to walk.


	2. 2

The _mue sur la pierre_ is carried out in a room far removed from all disturbance, and in this apartment the falconer sleeps; he takes the bird out, and is very careful with it.

-

“Kept us up half the night with his kickin’, milady. Won’t stand still, bites a’ his belly. Sure signs of the sickness.” The boy picked at the grime beneath his fingernails as he talked, and she could only half hear him above the loud thumping coming from behind the wooden gates. But a blind-deaf fool could’ve known something needed to be done.

“Kill it.” She was careful to tug all the crinkles from her voice. “Quickly.”

Their master of horse spat a fat yellow wad onto the straw. “Hadn’t we better consult his lordship first?”

“In the time it would take us to send Lord Axell a raven and for him to reply we could procure another animal altogether. I want it done before noon.” She sniffed, eying each of the half dozen stableboys in turn. “And burn the meat.” 

A plague of mad horses, the bitches in their kennel birthing whole litters of stillborns, lightning storms with no sign of rain, a slow summer creeping up the Narrow Sea by inches. She had heard the maids saying this was to be the one to last a thousand years, and how did the rhyme go again? Springtime’s babe is full of laughter; summer’s child is fair and sweet; autumn’s boy will join the slaughter; winter’s son is born for grief.

_But no mention of daughters._

The night before she had dreamed of her first wedding day. Robert’s hand giving her arm a squeeze strong enough to bruise as he strode beside her down the sept, taller, more handsome than her husband would ever be. The dance. Renly weaving between guests to run his sticky hands down her dress and ask her to hold him. In her dream it was blood on his fingers instead of honey and when she pulled away his sobbing turned to screams. 

A queer happening. When she thought of him then, awake and standing in the shadow of a stone dragon’s arched and crumbling tale, she saw him perched atop a merlon, arms outstretched, thick, black curls flung over his eyes. Another version of Robert, who was in turn another version of their lord father, who was in turn, a version of his lord father before him, if his stories were to be believed. Amidst it all, her, the incomprehensible growth on an otherwise coherent family tree.

As she made her daily rounds, she began, as was her way, to revise the note she had written to her husband. A brief summary of accounts, preceded by her usual perfunctory greeting, followed by her usual perfunctory farewell. Embedded within, one piece of irregularity—and now two. 

_To my lord and husband_ , she recited, peering in upon the seamstresses, sunlight caught between their needles and their hair. _Since my last letter we have acquired one thousand dragons and one hundred and twelve stags, having paid a little over five hundred dragons towards maintenance of the castle and wages of the staff._

_I must inform you that your horse has caught the madness and required putting down. As you rarely had occasion to ride him I presume the loss will not be too great._

“Is m’lady to be joining us?” the septa said, smiling. As her hands loosened the strip of colored cloth bearing a pair of circling stags fell flat against her lap. 

Like as not it would end on a pillowcase for Lord Axell to drool into. 

“No, septa, not today. Please continue with your work.” 

All the other girls gazed up at her through their eyelashes, perhaps expecting a trick of light to turn her into a proper lady of the house. The oldest of them couldn’t have been more than six and ten, each and every one of them yellow-haired and comely. Some were bold and some were meek and some, whose stitches were slightly less even than those of the others, were simply bored out of their minds. 

She left them with their threads, and brusquely filed away her letter to Axell, pending revision. There was only the next to last paragraph to consider, one she remained uncharacteristically reluctant to put it into words. 

The forge was silent when she stepped through on her way to the kitchens. She’d always liked the smell of it. Smell of good, honest labor. Briefly she thought she could see Donal Noye’s well-remembered form outlined against the fire, hear his voice chafe against the stone walls, _Shouldn’t you be with your mother, m’lady?_

In the kitchens she watched the skinning of hares and the scaling of fish and idly thought of being sick again. There was a gleaming heap of viscera on the corner of the nearest table. The cats were eyeing it from their perch near the fire and the hum of blood flies was constant and how undignified it would be, were she to heave what was left of her breakfast up here and now in front of all the servants—

“M’lady, dinner will be ready shortly.”

She blinked, swallowed, and folded the fabric of her dress between her fingers. She said “Yes, thank you” and could feel all the organs in her body exchange locations, like so many drifting ships. 

The sensation had passed by the time she found herself standing in the corridor outside her bedchamber. The windows were still open, as she’d left them that morning when it seemed there wasn’t a breath of air left in the keep. At the very least, it wasn’t so hot here as it was in the Stormlands, and not so hot there as she knew it would be in King’s Landing, where Axell was sweating and sleeping his way through one Small Council meeting after another. 

_To my lord and husband…_

Cressen sent the ravens out every afternoon like clockwork, one of his many admirable qualities. There would be smallfolk coming to see her after dinner and accounts to be settled with the suppliers of their fish and grain, the same endless grind of a turning wheel that started… oh, so many years ago. She didn’t like to think backwards but it felt almost out of her hands.

In the yard below, Axell’s horse was screaming, and then it wasn’t.

She sat at her table, set to writing. All the paragraphs she’d prearranged. All the routine happenings she knew he would not give a first thought to, much less a second: the numbers, and the weather, and now this. 

_I feel it my duty to tell you that I am with child once more. The maester informs me, as I inform you, that it is two moons along, and healthy, so far as he is able to tell._

_Your lady wife,_

She paused, dripping ink onto the tabletop. The signing finished the thing. She could never bring herself to not send a finished letter. Cressen had wanted to do this for her, the way he always wanted to shoulder her burdens, but that was ever such a concession, the easiest and thus most unacceptable of paths.

“Done is done,” she murmured to the room, and then her name was bleeding across the parchment and she was reaching for the packet of salt at her elbow. 

The smell of cooking horseflesh was blowing in through the open window. Her body, ever traitorous, roiled like a summer storm as she stood to close the shutters. It wouldn’t be long before the rumors would start, she thought to herself. The contents of her chamberpot, the lack of blood on her sheets – it was times like these that almost made her glad for living on such a far flung place, removed from the prying eyes of court. And, should the child die again, or not be a son, then it would only be her shame to contend with. Her shame, and Axell’s anger, buzzing around her ears like bluebottles, like a mad horse. 

As the wax dried she thought of the septon and how fervently he had held her hands when the first one died, and told her to pray. 

In a few moments someone would come to knock on the door to inform her that the dinner was done, and would she be coming down to dine this afternoon. She would hand them the parchment. There would be no hesitation. The door would moan as she shut it behind her, the way it always did, and she would rustle down the steps, one worn block fo stone at a time, and she would feel small, small as the thing inside her belly. 

_Let it not be a girl. ___

She wiped her hands of ink before placing them over her stomach, one folded above the other, and for a moment, she shut her eyes, and was alone.


End file.
